West chairman addresses employees in private ceremony Tuesday

Published: Tuesday, January 29, 2013 at 10:13 PM.

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On Tuesday, West Pharmaceuticals Chairman and CEO Donald E. Morel Jr. held a private meeting with the employees at his company’s Kinston plant.

The meeting was poignant and personal, focused on remembering the six people — William Arthur Gray Sr., Faye Jones Wilkins, James Clarence Byrd, Kevin M. Cruiess, Milton Murrell and Allen Earl “Butch” Grant — who passed away following the fateful accident on Jan. 29, 2003.

Before the meeting, Morel took part in an exclusive interview with The Free Press. He said losing the six members of his company, along with the dozens of injuries in the accident, was extremely tough for him personally and for his West leadership team.

“It’s something no one should ever have to deal with,” Morel said. “All of us were devastated. … We had never had anything like this happen to us as a company; an accident of this nature was something that was unforeseen and unanticipated.”

Morel said immediate lessons were learned from the accident by his team.

“The lessons came on a couple of different fronts,” Morel said. “We had always prided ourselves on our safety program and employee training. Many of the employees credited the emergency escape training with their being able to escape the building through the smoke and the confusion in the immediate aftermath of the accident.

“The second thing was that as part of your emergency plan, make sure that your emergency responders are familiar with your operation, familiar with your people and the types of material worked with on site.”

On Tuesday, West Pharmaceuticals Chairman and CEO Donald E. Morel Jr. held a private meeting with the employees at his company’s Kinston plant.

The meeting was poignant and personal, focused on remembering the six people — William Arthur Gray Sr., Faye Jones Wilkins, James Clarence Byrd, Kevin M. Cruiess, Milton Murrell and Allen Earl “Butch” Grant — who passed away following the fateful accident on Jan. 29, 2003.

Before the meeting, Morel took part in an exclusive interview with The Free Press. He said losing the six members of his company, along with the dozens of injuries in the accident, was extremely tough for him personally and for his West leadership team.

“It’s something no one should ever have to deal with,” Morel said. “All of us were devastated. … We had never had anything like this happen to us as a company; an accident of this nature was something that was unforeseen and unanticipated.”

Morel said immediate lessons were learned from the accident by his team.

“The lessons came on a couple of different fronts,” Morel said. “We had always prided ourselves on our safety program and employee training. Many of the employees credited the emergency escape training with their being able to escape the building through the smoke and the confusion in the immediate aftermath of the accident.

“The second thing was that as part of your emergency plan, make sure that your emergency responders are familiar with your operation, familiar with your people and the types of material worked with on site.”

Morel had only been in the CEO position at West for a mere nine months when the accident occurred. However, his steady leadership and employee-first mantra helped him guide the company during one of its most vulnerable periods.

“Our ability to recover from the accident, I think, sprung from the fact that we met with the employees immediately afterwards, told them what we were going to do and what our priorities were,” Morel said. “That allowed us to begin the process of getting manufacturing to other sites, planning for personnel moves and equipment moves.”

Keeping West Pharmaceuticals in Kinston was personal for Morel.

He grew up in a small rural town in southwest Virginia and said he saw similarities between his hometown and Kinston — another reason he wanted to keep his company’s presence in Lenoir County.

When he was growing up, he said the biggest employer in his town left his home.

“As a young man, I saw what was left behind and the effect it had on our county,” Morel said.

That life experience motivated Morel to help keep West Pharmaceuticals in Kinston.

“We basically sat down, looked each other in the eye and said, ‘If there’s any way we can rebuild here, we’re going to do it,” Morel said. “Once that decision was made, the county and the township had a shell building we could move into quite quickly and began to renovate and begin construction on.”

Morel — who doesn’t hesitate to share his love of Kinston and Lenoir County — is also admired widely throughout this area.

“There is not a better corporation locally,” said Bruce Parson, who was the Kinston-Lenoir County Chamber of Commerce president 10 years ago. “I’ve never seen the compassion or concern, not just from middle management, but from the president, Don Morel. He made it his business to be here on the ground assuring his employees everything was going to be OK.”

In his interview with The Free Press, Morel made a specific point of wanting to thank doctors, nurses and officials at Chapel Hill’s N.C. Burn Center, but his largest gratitude was to Kinston and Lenoir County.

“After 10 years, when we look back, we tried to say ‘Thank you’ to the community the best way we could,” Morel said. “We’re very proud of our record in the community with how we support the United Way and with the West without Borders program that, on a year-by-year basis, goes to help children with special needs in the community.

“… We’re also extraordinarily grateful to all the people locally, whether they were first responders or the business folks who responded quickly. They were able to make a big difference in the people we were able to get out safely and offer aid to those that were injured.”

Bryan C. Hanks can be reached at 252-559-1074 or at Bryan.Hanks@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at BCHanks and check out his blog at bhanks.encblogs.com.